Pritzker: Use governor’s office to help people

Thursday

Mar 8, 2018 at 8:22 PM

Bernard Schoenburg of GateHouse Media Illinois

Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of articles detailing the backgrounds and positions of candidates for governor in the March 20 primary. Coming Saturday: Bob Daiber, Tio Hardiman and Robert Marshall.

J.B. Pritzker says he was raised to fight for things that help people.

“I’m running for governor because everything that we care about is under siege right now by a racist, xenophobic, misogynist president in Washington, D.C., and his local silent partner, Bruce Rauner,” Pritzker told the editorial board of The State Journal-Register.

“So many of the things that I was raised to believe in — fighting for social and economic justice, equality and inclusion, standing up and doing the right thing — so many of those things are not being carried out in the state of Illinois today, and I believe I have a record that demonstrates that I’m living up to those values.”

In his race for governor — an effort in which he has spent more than $60 million of his own money — points to past projects, including school breakfast programs, including an expansion of the program he advocated with a 2016 state law; and his work spearheading efforts to build a small-business technology incubator in Chicago called 1871, with the name representing the rebuilding done after the Great Chicago Fire that year. He says the endeavor has created 7,000 jobs.

He says he’s worked for more than two decades pushing early childhood education nationally and worked with the administration of President Barack Obama to help organize the 2014 White House Summit on Early Education. And he says he led the creation of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, which he says “teaches more than 60,000 children and teachers from across Illinois each year to fight bigotry, hatred and intolerance.”

The J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Foundation, named for the candidate and his wife, between 2013 and 2015 gave away more than $50 million in total. The board has included M.K. and Tony Pritzker — the candidate’s brother — and J.B. stepped down when he decided to run for governor.

Forbes magazine puts Pritzker’s worth at about $3.5 billion. He is a founder and has run The Pritzker Group with his brother, Tony. The business is a private investment firm with offices in Chicago and Los Angeles that owns companies mostly in tech, manufacturing and packaging industries, with thousands of people employed, according to Forbes and the campaign. The group also has a stake in Elon Musk’s rocket firm SpaceX, Forbes reported.

The candidate’s late uncle, Jay Pritzker, founded Hyatt Hotels; and J.B.’s late father, Donald Pritzker, managed and developed the Hyatt Hotel chain. J.B.’s sister, Penny Pritzker, also a billionaire, was U.S. commerce secretary from 2013 to 2017, in the Obama administration.

Key issues

Pritzker has pushed for passage of a progressive income tax. He says that would be a way to “protect middle class families and those striving to get to the middle class from tax increases,” while asking “those who are wealthier to pay more.” He has not specified what the rate structure would be, saying it would have to be negotiated with lawmakers. The plan would require voters to approve a constitutional amendment to end the current requirement that any Illinois income tax be flat.

He is opposed to a tax, as some want, on financial transactions on Chicago commodities and futures exchanges, saying the exchanges could move and the jobs would be lost to the state.

Revenue-raising is one reason he wants to legalize recreational use of marijuana, but he says fairness is a key component.

“Criminalizing marijuana hasn’t made our communities safer,” it states on Pritzker’s campaign website. “What it has done is disproportionately impact black and brown communities. There are way too many people who have gone to prison or are currently sitting in prison for marijuana related offenses. The criminalization of marijuana has never been and never will be enforced fairly and it’s time to bring that to an end.”

On jobs and the economy, Pritzker supports a $15-per-hour minimum wage — up from the state’s current level of $8.25. He would work to expand access to capital for small business, including more availability of microloans — perhaps working with a federal program to get $10,000 to $25,000 loans to businesses. He said he would leverage as much federal money as possible for infrastructure, including not only road, rail and waterway needs, but extension of broadband internet access. He says he supports prevailing wages and Project Labor Agreements for infrastructure work.

And he said he would try to make universities “hubs of economic development,” helping build small businesses and draw larger ones.

Pritzker said he would promote the good things about Illinois like its “highly educated, dedicated workforce.”

“I think you need a good chief marketing officer in the governor’s office,” Pritzker said.

On health care, Pritzker says the state should provide a public option by allowing residents to buy into the Medicaid program.

“What it essentially would do is provide for middle class families the ability to ditch their private, high-cost health insurance and instead choose a state plan that is several thousand dollars less,” Pritzker said. According to his website, the plan would be called “IllinoisCares” and would require people who do not receive federal health care subsidies to pay premiums to cover the full cost of Medicaid coverage.

“As a result, there should be no additional costs to taxpayers,” his campaign states.

Controversies

In late 2008, the FBI was secretly recording telephone conversations of then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who would later be convicted of corruption charges and is now in federal prison.

Some of the recorded conversations came out at Blagojevich’s trials. The Chicago Tribune obtained other recordings — which were not released to the public by the judge in those trials — of conversations that Blagojevich had with Pritzker. One, disclosed last May, had Pritzker telling Blagojevich that he was “really not that interested” in being named to the U.S. Senate — an appointment Blagojevich had power to make as the seat was being vacated by then President-elect Obama. But Pritzker did say if the state treasurer post would come open, he would be interested.

GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner’s campaign has run advertisements playing the tapes. Pritzker was never charged with any wrongdoing.

The Tribune released more tapes in early February, in which Pritzker and Blagojevich were discussing potential African-Americans who could replace Obama in the Senate. Pritzker advocated for his longtime friend, Secretary of State Jesse White, and called him the “least offensive” of some choices. Pritzker also argued against then-Senate President Emil Jones Jr., saying he was “a little more crass.”

Revelations of the tapes brought criticism. Jones, who is supporting Chris Kennedy for governor, told the Chicago Sun-Times that Pritzker “likes acceptable blacks who are meek and won’t do anything.”

Pritzker apologized for the remarks in a news conference and a series of appearances.

“I recognize that the conversation that I had with the governor that day was not my best self,” Pritzker told the editorial board of the SJ-R. “I did not put my best values forward, and I regret that, and I have apologized for that.” He said the comments were directed at individuals, and not the broader community. And, he said, he has “spent a lifetime trying to lift up the African-American community,” including work on early childhood education and other issues.

“I’ve created substance abuse treatment clinics and health clinics on the south and west sides of Chicago,” Pritzker said. “And I’ve engaged as a leader of the (Illinois) Human Rights Commission in fighting for civil rights.”

As for talking about an appointment with Blagojevich, Pritzker told the Tribune there was nothing inappropriate about the conversation, and nobody should be surprised he would want a job where he could serve people “after 25 years of doing public service in a variety of ways.”

Another controversy has involved a historic mansion next to the Pritzker family’s home on Chicago’s Gold Coast, near Lake Michigan. The second home was purchased for $3.7 million, but, the Sun-Times reported in May, the inside was unusable in part because there had been a remodeling project and toilets were disconnected. Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios, who also chairs the Cook County Democratic Party, lowered the assessed value of the historic building from $6.25 million to just under $1.1 million. That allowed Pritzker to get nearly $230,000 in property-tax breaks and refunds, the newspaper reported.

Pritzker’s campaign at the time reported the tax break resulted from a “routine appeal.” He told the SJ-R’s editorial board that more than 50,000 property-tax assessment appeals are filed each year in Cook County.

“I’ve done it only once,” he said. He also said renovations, which had been stopped, have been restarted on the building.

On another issue, Rauner and some of Pritzker’s Democratic opponents have tried to link him to House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago. Madigan heads the Democratic Party of Illinois, and while neither Madigan nor the party have endorsed in the March 20 primary for governor, Pritzker opponents say Madigan is on Pritzker’s side — some noting that Pritzker has not asked Madigan to step down as party leader after the removal from party work of two people accused of harassment. Pritzker did say Madigan’s action in the first case should have been faster.

“I’ve been an independent leader, an independent thinker my whole life, and I’m not going to change when I become governor,” Pritzker said. He said he agrees with some Madigan priorities and disagrees with others. He said he’s for an independent system of drawing legislative maps, and for term limits for legislative leaders.